Sharing This Magic
by SalomeLily
Summary: Hans discovers that part of Elsa's powers were transferred to him when he failed to kill her. Cooperation can lead to magic beyond anything they dreamed. More fighting can end in mutual destruction. They might even discover something else that they never expected . . .
1. Prologue

A year after Prince Hans of the Southern Isles was banished interminably from Arendelle, he found himself on a sleek sailing ship headed straight for its port.

How had it come to this? Why had his brothers released the sociopath from prison and permitted him to return to the nation-state where his crimes had been committed?

Hans had developed a strange power. A very strange power indeed. A . . . _frozen_ power. A power that he knew wasn't unique.

After he had first released ice crystals from his bare - albeit shackled - palms, he had demmanded an audience with Petya, the most sympathetic of his brothers. He had agreed to allow him access to the library, which Hans had sorely missed. The library was the only place where he could find some release . . .

In any event, there was no time to revel in the books. He quickly located the section on magic, which he had previously scorned as being the stuff of children's stories and folktales. Most of it seemed ridiculous - black forests full of trolls? Princes turning to glass? - but at last, he found a rather legthy section about what he was looking for in a rather moldy toe entitled _Olde Northern Spellworkes and their Executioning_.

Apparently, when Hans had raised his sword to kill Queen Elsa, and a frozen Princess Anna jumped in front, the sword hadn't been the only thing that shattered. The queen's magic had met with an equal force, and they both fragmented. The sword literally broke. The spell was more complex. As a shockwave had reverberated through their immediate vicinity, some of the fragmented spell had latched onto its attacker. The magic had found its way into Hans.

Apparently, it was a very rare circumstance (as if magic wasn't rare enough already). Besides the whole 'shattering' business, the new partial possessor of the magic had to have a certain something unusual already. Apparently powerlust would do. The magic had found a willing host, spiritually starving in that cell, and latched hungrily on, beginning to grow. It wasn't very long before Hans found that he too could command the frozen elements at will.

Well, almost.

Unlike Queen Elsa of Arendelle, he wasn't _quite_ capable of making immense glacial palaces in moments or using delicate yet ruthless spears of solid ice . . . Yes, that idea appealed greatly. Actually, all he could really to as of yet was form snowballs in his hands and cause refreshing little flurries. A welcome side effect was that cold temperatures didn't seem to cause any discomfort anymore. All he felt was a delicious sense of freedom when the mercury plummeted. And he was gaining more control over the magic with each passing day.

According to the book, their mutual powers coudn't be complete unless they worked together. Together . . . the passage of the text was vague, but it seemed that if they united, their magic would be "greater than anything that the mortal mind can yet conceive, rivalling the creating aurora tundras."

So. He had to get to Queen Elsa.

It was simple, really. All Hans had had to do was convince his brothers that he was a menace to himself who needed the queen's help and advice to survive this immensely painful experience, et cetera, et cetera. It also helped that he pretended to be extrmemely repentant and morally reformed. This was how he had found himself out of prison and on this lovely fast ship speeding towards Arendelle.

Once he arrived, it hadn't been difficult for his representative to get an immediate audience with the queen. His presence alone was enough to cause political tummult.

Queen Elsa stormed in. It seemed that she could never _walk_ anywhere, she always had to _storm_ around like some sort of snow cloud on the warpath.

"Prince Hans, we demmand to know what your presence here means. You have been unconditionally banished from our kingdom."

Her use of the majestic plural was adorable. As much as Hans didn't want to objectify such a powerful political leader, he smirked slightly.

"Your Majesty," he said, bowing smoothly. The queen's expression of cold, reserved anger didn't falter. Hans decided to skip the Prince Charming ac for now.

"I find that I have your magic."

"W- what?" A tiny line etched itself between her brows.

"I too can control snow." He held up his palm and made a little puff of snowflakes and cold air. Queen Elsa gasped.

"How?" was all she said.

"You cursed me, Your Majesty." He rifled through the book, stopping at a premarked page and showing it to her. "According to the ancient rules of magic, we are bonded for life. Like it or not, our destinies are now inextricably linked."

Elsa snatched the book, her eyes greedily devouring the page, desperately seeking falsehood in his words. Her Southern Isles reading skills weren't flawless, but she got the gist.

"No, no, no," she mumbled, uncsonciously flicking her wrist and sending an thin layer of ice skimming over the window pane, making fantastic fractals. Hans merely watched her as she began pacing, her shoulders hunched.

"I'm afraid so. What's worse, I can't control it, not even marginally."

The implication that Elsa had "marginal" control over her magic stung like a nettle. She spun on her heel, ready to retort, but he was still speaking.

"Only together can our powers take full effect." He waited a moment for his words to sink in. "Queen Elsa, we must work together."

Elsa considered the man standing before her. There was truth to what he said. She had known it before he had shown her the snowflakes. She had known since before her own powers started fading - nothing major, just a blurring where reflexes had been sharp, a slowness and blockiness to her skills. If she was completely honest with herself, she had known since his attack had failed. There had been _something_. At the time she had been obviously involved in the moment, and afterwards she told herself that it had been shock and concern for Anna. But no, this was confirmation: some of her magic had become lodged in this _monster_.

She sank into a chair, ice spreading across the floor. "What do we do now," she inquired huskily, not bothering to inflect her voice to form a question.

"The book has some instructions, but they're extremely vague. Firstly, we need more information." There was no hesitation in his voice. She _hated_ that self-assuredness.

"You've had time to plan."

"I'm a crazy sociopath who was locked up with a new superpower, a book, and a load of resentment. What do you honestly expect?"

"You have a point," she conceded. "Where do you propose we get this information?"

"Haven't the foggiest idea."

A smile tugged at the corner of Elsa's mouth. "I do."

"What is it?"

"See, I have some friends who are love experts. . . "


	2. Chapter 1

The trolls were enthusiastic to see Elsa in the Valley of Living Rock, but instantly became antagonistic when they recognized Prince Hans from his description.

"Wait, wait!" said Elsa, trying to keep them from attacking the prince. Or - flattening him, or - something. Elsa wasn't really sure how vengeful trolls behaved. Based on the sea of scowling gray faces surrounding them, not well.

"Please, we need to see Pabbie," she requested. The trolls muttered mutinously. "If we don't, something bad might happen. We don't know," she pleaded.

The elderly troll parted the crowd. "Magic problems?"

"Yes."

"Did the ice magic rebound into him?"

"We think so."

He looked gravely up at them from under tufted green brows.

"I suspected this might happen. This is serious."

"What is the worst thing that might happen?" gulped Elsa. The ground around her feet began to frost over in her agitation.

"The worst thing is that you become separated. If you are physically distanced, or even if you continue to fight and be spiritually distant, the magic will be divided. It will turn in on itself, trying desperately to get to its other half, and you will both turn to ice. Irrevocably."

The trolls gasped. Elsa blanched. Hans, though no one was paying attention to him, looked nonchalant. (Better ice than prison-for-life, after all.)

"What do we have to do?"

"Firstly, you must learn to live in harmony with one another. It's obvious that you don't exactly get along."

_Understatement of the year._ Hans snorted. Elsa glared poisonously at him.

"You must cooperate," continued Pabbie. "You will find that your magic cannot function to its fullest potential alone. It will be extremely difficult for you to learn to control this, but together, your magic can be as strong as it was with only Elsa."

"But my powers are still functioning normally!" asserted Elsa, forgetting in her urgency to refer to heself by the majestic plural. "Mostly, anyway. All _he_ can do is make a few snowflakes."

"That will change. As autumn wanes into winter, more and more of the magic with spread to him. By the winter solstice, the magic will be equally divided between you."

"Oh." Elsa looked like she had been hit over the head with a heavy instrument. Hans repressed a gleeful smile.

"I would recommend that you go up on the North Mountain to experiment. As I said, it will take time to fully adjust to this new coexistence, and you will need space and solitude."

Elsa nodded. "Thank you, Pabbie." She nodded regally to the trolls and swept out of the clearing, leaving eddies of snow behind her on the autumn breeze.

Elsa had grown accustomed to being the most imperious person in a room. When she walked, chin tilted slightly up, spine rigid, Anna would scurry behind her like a flustered squirrel. Her whole demeanor just seemed to make everyone else defer to her.

Not so with Prince Hans. He too had been trained from birth to carry himself like royalty. To Elsa's annoyance, he easily kept pace with her and matched her in regal disdain.

"So . . . the North Mountain." His tone delicately implied, _The last time you were there, I saved your life._ Elsa was irked. He had indeed saved her life, but only so he could kill her at the right time. "Is your ice palace still standing?"

"Do you jest? You saw the state it was last in, yes? With everything smashed up? Since then, it has endured over a year of precipitation and changing seasons."

"I concur with Your Majesty, but it is _magical_ ice, after all."

"Do you imply that we ought to follow Pabbie's advice and ascend the North Mountain to work with our magic?"

"Yes," he said simply. Elsa shot him a suspicious sideways glance, certain that he was planning something. His countenance was masklike, the deceiver.

"We shall consult Princess Anna on the subject. She is capable, and would be a competent substitute if we were to take a brief sojourn on the mountain."

"Can you _please_ stop referring to yourself by the majestic plural? I never know if you're referring to both of us or just yourself."

Elsa's spine stiffened even more. "_We_ shall not fall into the uncouth speaking patterns of the masses, however _you_ choose to conduct your manner of speech, Prince Hans."

"How conscientious of you, Your Majesty, Queen Elsa of Arendelle. Since you are so refined of word, I do hope that in future you shall refer to me as 'His Serene Highness, Prince Hans of the Southern Isles, Thirteenth of the Line of Fyodorin'."

"We shall dedicate ourselves to the task, Your Serene Highness, Prince Hans of the Southern Isles, Thirteenth of the Line of Fyodorin."

Elsa mounted her horse and broke off at a canter. Hans cursed softly under his breath as he mounted Sitron and followed her, the chill air stinging his face like tiny needles. Soon he wouldn't feel the cold at all.

Securely back in the palace, with Hans temporarily stowed in an obliging dungeon cell, Elsa tried to explain the news to Anna in a way that wouldn't make her freak out.

"Prince Hans is here."

"_What_?!" Her blue eyes widened in shock and anger. Elsa groaned inwardly, knowing that she had picked the wrong tactic in her haste.

"It's not - anything to with the kingdoms, really, or you," she said, hurriedly trying to justify his presence.

"I thought you banned him from the kingdom, Elsa," Anna said, unable to keep a faint note of accusation out of her voice.

"We did, but . . . circumstances change."

"What is it? What could possibly make it okay for him to come back here? He tried to _kill_ you, Elsa!" she choked, her usually merry eyes glassing over with sudden tears. Over a year later, the memory of his cruelty still hurt like a vicious thorn.

"Anna." Elsa hugged her sister, still trying to accustom herself to spontaneous physical contact to show affection. After a decade of near-solitude in her frozen enclave, it still felt unnatural. Unnatural yet so natural. Only Anna ever saw this side of her, and only when she had the protective gloves on. "What you have to understand is that . . . some of our magic seems to have become a part of him."

Anna recoiled in pure surprise. "How?"

"It happened when his sword broke; I don't know exactly how. He can make ice crystals with his bare hands already, and Pabbie says that it's going to escalate."

"Pabbie?" Relief broke over her face. "Did you talk to him? He knows how to undo it, right?" Anna had a much warmer relationship with the boisterous, overly-jolly trolls than Elsa did.

She hesitated. "He didn't say anything about undoing it . . . I doubt it can be done. _Yet_, at least," she added hurriedly. "I'm sure there's a way."

"Oh. I'm so sorry, Elsa. I can't imagine sharing _anything_ with that criminal, let alone magic."

"I know." _Actually, I'm going to have to imagine it _very_ vividly in the near future,_ she mused bitterly to herself.

"So, what's going to happen?" Horror crossed her expression. "He's - he's not going to live _here_, is he?!"

"No! Not in the palace," she assured her quickly.

"What do you mean?"

"Pabbie advised us to go to the North Mountain with Prince Hans to practice our newly joint magic, and we are inclined to do so."

"The North Mountain . . . for how long?"

"We do not know. At least until the winter solstice"

"Which is . . ." she prompted

"December twenty-first."

"_You're going up on an isolated mountain with that psychopath for two whole months?!" _Anna demmanded, her eyes going even wider. "Are you insane?"

"Look, Anna, this needs to happen. The consequences . . . The consequences could be really, really bad. You just have to trust us."

"Elsa, don't be an idiot! What if he tries to hurt you?"

She smiled wryly. "We are capable of defending ourselves, remember?"

"Elsa!" Anna's softer auquamarine eyes looked half-pleadingly into her sister's hard sapphire ones, amazed that one so clever and intelligent could be this much of an idiot sometimes. "If Hans has part of your magic, you won't be able to use ice to defend yourself."

Elsa went slack-jawed with shock. She hadn't fully considered the ramifications of this new curse. Vulnerability hit her over the head, leaving her feeling winded and disoriented. Always, _always, _the one thing that she could depend upon - for good or ill - was her immense power. She had taken it for granted, this uniquely deadly defense. Now it had become the possession of her nemesis, quite possibly the only person who would try to hurt her. For the first time in forever, the thing that had become a part of her identity she could be comfortable with, revealed itself for what it had been all along - a swirling, volatile, deadly storm inside.


	3. Chapter 2

Three days later, Queen Elsa and Prince Hans reached the summit of the North Mountain.

Elsa breathed deeply, eager to fill her lungs with the deiliciously frigid air. The remnants of her ice palace were in shambles, still partially standing. With an impatient spasm of her wrist, she shattered it into slivers that were blown away on the winter wind.

The mountain's peak was covered with a light mantle of snow for the duration of the year, even in the height of summer. In winter, the drifts would be as tall as houses.

She felt free already, unconstrained by anything. Anything . . . except the prince, of course. The only blot on her otherwise-flawless mood.

He was looking at the blank canvass of snow with a certain hungry ambition in his expression. Experimentally, he tried to create ice. A brittle icicle formed instantly and fell from a height of about four feet to land pathetically in the snow. Elsa hid a smile.

"Well?" he demmanded expectantly. "Are you going to rebuild the palace?"

"One moment."

Elsa's keen gaze swept over the pure blue-and-white tones of the ice and snow. The raw materials were beautiful. She took another deep breath and raised her hands.

Hans watched avidly as she formed the palace, replete with a sweeping staircase and chandelier. It wasn't an exact replica of the previous one - the turrets had onion-shaped spires of silvery ice, and the overall shape was a bit different. It was gorgeous.

The queen, too, was at her best advantage. She looked almost feral, in a state of complete release as she crafted the graceful _palais en glace_. She was quite attractive like this. In any event, it made a pleasant change from her usual repressed, austere facade.

"Well done, Queen Elsa," he said appreciatively. "You've truly outdone yourself."

"Do you think so?" She considered her creation, biting her lower lip slightly. "We think the outdoor balcony is too disproportionate to the tallest turret."

"No, it's perfect. It reminds me of the Eastern citadels."

"You have been to the Eastern lands?"

"Not me," he admitted grudgingly, "but one of my brothers told me of it."

"Oh."

They stood in silence. This time, the quality of the silence was somehow different. Perhaps it was the bracing air, or the complete freedom that Elsa had suddenly been granted, but she was feeling more tranquil by the minute. She was even on the verge of feeling amicably toward the prince when he broke the silence.

"So . . . aren't we supposed to be practicing or something?"

Elsa's heart thudded painfully. Practice giving up her _magic_, to share it with this criminal!? Oh, no. Not yet. Not until she had done some very, very careful planning.

"It seems to be growing dark," she observed, gesturing towards the sun, which was indeed fat and red on the western horizon.

"Very well, we shall rest." He looked calculatingly at her, and Elsa's spine stiffened slightly. "We'll start practicing tomorrow, then?"

"Perhaps," she mumbled vaugely. It was best to keep him at bay for as long as possible.

Hans knew that something was up, but now was not the time to argue - not yet, though his fingers were fairly itching to create a blizzard. There would be time. Perhaps she _was _genuinely tired after their journey. Yes, there would be time, and other methods if the queen continued delaying.


End file.
